Prologue

1800-1801

      “I see that the Fox is in his usual top form,” a sardonic voice drawled, catching the ear of a patron standing close by. The speaker indicated with a nod of the head to the circle now formed by the other patrons, within which stood a tall, graceful man supremely blessed with broad shoulders, tapered waist, lean hips, and strong legs.

      “Yes, Lord Colville.” His American companion laughed quietly. “Young Chelsea will soon be wishing he had lost his fortune at the tables rather than his life at the end of that blade.

      “Let us hope that the dear boy has the sense to admit he lost fairly,” Colville replied. “I hear that Wynters paid a fortune for these carpets and would not be pleased should they be ruined by a blood stain.”

      “Only a fool would have made so public a protest. Bound to end in a humiliation one way or another. I hear the Fox’s skill with the epée is unsurpassed.”

      The opponent, trying to parry and thrust, was already red faced and perspiring, his lack of finesse and that dawning of regret evident. The Fox, in contrast, had hardly moved from the spot. His blade flashed and the young lordling went down in a tangle of wildly flailing limbs. The Fox stood calmly over him, neither labouring with breath nor sweating under his embroidered silk shirt. His voice carried clearly around the room.

      “You are not a bad sort, young Tomas, but rash-headed and quite the worst gambler I’ve ever seen.” Laughter rippled through the room; the Fox stepped back and helped him up. “Rupert has your coat and hat waiting. I will extend your notes until you have grown a few more whiskers. Do not return until you are prepared to settle them, and have the nerve to play a fair game.”

      “Well, well.” Colville watched the young lord bow, and head toward Rupert who was minding the door, “Chelsea gets to keep his arse and his dignity it seems.”

      As the crowd dissolved, they watched the owner re-hang the sword above a gilt framed painting, the scene like much of the erotic but tasteful art gracing the main room, expensive and one of a kind.

      “Considering this is one of the most exclusive gaming hells in London, I doubt Chelsea’s sire is going to be pleased. I heard that Wynters is on the verge of banning the duke for not paying his notes, and has already extended the time limit twice.”

      The earl grunted, “Nothing rare there, Harold, my boy. I have turned over chunks of my own fortune behind these red doors, and while I can appreciate a man of foresight…to lure in the nobles, dignitaries, foreign princes, and merchants to a new establishment. It rather galls that he has now accumulated more wealth than most of his patrons, and has our wives panting after him too.”

      The Fox had donned his jacket and was now being detained by a group of females, who were obvious in their familiarity with him.

      Harold Emerson III’s gaze shifted to a screened-off section of the main floor and then back. “Since I observed this week that you normally partake of the working girls he allows to do business here, I will spare you my sympathy. I heard a rumour that he no longer invites women above to his private quarters. I imagine that since the place has become a success, and gaining membership has become so difficult, he is more discriminating altogether.”

      Colville knocked back the remainder of his drink. “If my wife wishes to purchase a stud with my coin on occasion, I certainly have no qualms about paying to ride a better mare now and then.” He laughed and replaced his empty glass with another. “We, who wed for titles and blood lines, certainly find more pleasure there, once the heirs are seen to.”

      “Apparently the females feel much the same,” Harold commented dryly. “I wonder if he extends them lines of credit too?”

      “No. He allows lines of credit to us, but once the maximum is reached, we are treated to the same as young Chelsea until they are paid. However, it is paid in cold hard assets if not coin. I heard he had acquired an estate from some aged baron who had been dying…allowed the man to live out his days there however. Look around you. They have lost ships to him, horses, mines, land, jewels, and stock. How a man with no background or connections has built this place by thirty, let alone the aura that surrounds him, is beyond me.”

      His companion nodded to a waiter and partook of the expensive cigars on the offered tray. He clipped the end and lit it, his glance flickering now to see that the Fox had left the group of pouting ladies to order a drink at the long mahogany bar.

      He puffed and looked around the room. The décor did reflect the wealth of its owner: burgundy papered walls, dark wood floors, the chandeliers sparkling. Spirits flowed freely along with other luxuries. The room was filled with the rich and titled, their silks and jewels glittering under the chandeliers. He said then, “He has vast contacts and liaisons, a wide network of people who knew how to find whatever his clients’ need. The staff was hand-picked…you aristocrats could learn something from the way the man does business.”

      The men looked at each other and then headed for the roulette table. “You colonials could learn something from us too, old chap,” remarked Lord Colville dryly. “Never allow your women, or your present losses, to distract you from good sport.” He clapped Harold on the back. “What was it you said you were in? Breweries—ah, well, the Fox certainly doesn’t’t have one of those…”

Chapter 1

      Gabriel stood casually, partly in the shadows, one hand in his pocket, the other holding the cheroot he was enjoying. His face appeared honey-warm but sculpted hollow by high cheekbones, flared nostrils and strong jaw line and chin. Silken claret hair fell straight to the shoulders of his ruffled, white silk shirt, and his eyes, under straight brows, were moving over the spacious room that was thick with boisterous patrons who could likely only see his snowy shirt and the glow of his cheroot. His black trousers, tucked into boots that were made for him exclusively, were snug and hid nothing of his assets.

      As of a month ago, he’d begun to refuse the discreet cards handed him by the females, which before then, he’d readily accepted. As a testament to his ever-foreseeing business mind, he’d found them a few replacements—young, healthy, handsome male animals from different parts of the world, who, as he’d once desired, wished to make money fast. The difference was that, unlike him, the men who accepted were also thinking themselves in fleshly paradise, and completely enthralled by lust.

      He wished them well, and apparently the females were satisfied, for they kept coming back, and many paid the men extra in the form of clothing and gifts. Gabriel took no profit from the men since they spent their money at the tables and bar too, so it made more sense to let them remain independent businessmen. He did not house them there either, though they used the second floor rooms. Once they made their money, they lived wherever or however they chose outside that red door.

      Relaxed yet alert, Gabriel caught the discreet signal sent his way by Rupert. The tall, thin man was dressed immaculately and standing on the shallow stairs that stepped down into the main room. Rupert, once a spy, did more than butler duty at the door. He filed away faces and statistics, and knew by memory everyone who belonged to the club, and anyone who desired a voucher for a new member went through him.

      Gabriel crushed out the cheroot in a standing tray and headed across the room. He nodded to those who looked up or over, met the eyes of the men running the tables, reading discreet signals that told him things were going smoothly, and glanced only slightly at the tables partly hidden behind plants and screens where other more fleshly games were arranged.

      Having reached the stairs, he leaned his head down so that Rupert could speak amid the din.

      “There’s a female. Apparently made an effort to dress like a male and wished a private meeting with you. I've sent her to the back.”

      Gabriel nodded and lightly slapped the man on the back before turning and heading down the stairs, across the room, and around the long busy bar area, to a room that served mostly as the accounting office. The lights were up when he opened the plain door and stepped in. It wasn’t a large room and held typical office necessities with only a settee and wet bar for anyone not working at the desk.

      He watched the figure rise as he closed the door, thinking that only Rupert and himself would have spotted her true sex because she’d not done a bad job of choosing the male clothing. The give-away was that she’d chosen a larger size to hide any curves, and that her face was too smooth.

      “Are you him?”

      He heard the slight northern accent. “Him?”

      “The Fox?”

      His brow rose. “Yes. “ He walked over and sat on the desk, watching her try to settle the hat. He said bluntly. “It’s apparent to me that you are a woman. So you may relax and state your business.”

* * * *

      Relax? Blair Mitchell thought almost hysterically. Was he joking? Her eyes had taken him in the moment he entered, and now went over him again with a bit of shock and surprise. She’d expected some narrow-eyed miser or seasoned, greedy old man. She’d not expected this strikingly handsome one. Nor someone as young, or as...well put together.

      She gave up trying to keep the hat on her balled up brown hair. She took it off, turned it nervously in her hands allowing the straight brown and honey tresses to fall free to her ears. She’d cut it a week ago and sold two feet of it to a wig shop to buy the clothing.

      “I don’t know how one goes about these things.” She cleared her throat and paced a bit, unable to be still under that direct, topaz stare. “I’m in desperate need of funds…”

      “I’m not a money lender,” he cut in. “I’ll direct you—”

      “No.” She stopped and turned, looking at him. “No. I…I have heard about you and about this place. I know that I could go to other…businessmen.” She shuddered and told him, “I’ve been in London a week and discreetly checked them out. But I couldn’t…”

      Gabriel had by now taken in her face as any shrewd businessman would. She was in her early twenties he’d guess, and around five feet four. She had hazel-green eyes, autumn shades, and a face that was healthy in color from being outdoors. She had even features, apricot lips, a slim nose, slightly arched brows, an angled chin and jaw. No beauty, but possessing an entirely artless look. Not the kind of woman who usually came through his doors.

      “I’m known for my discretion too. So why don’t you tell me your name, state your business, and I will direct you to whomever may be able to assist you.”

      She wet her lips. “I…I’m Blair Mitchell. I am twenty-five. I own a farm…well, not exactly.” She looked down, tossed the hat onto the settee and turned around again folding her arms and causing the baggy jacket to look worse. “There’s a man, a Sir Thomas Krandel…”

      “I know him. Wealthy, tall, thirty-six, black hair, made his fortune in sheep and factories.”

      She blinked. “Yes. That’s him. I owe debts…they became mine when my parents died. My brother already works in Krandel’s button factory. We sold off what we could, and though the factory is killing Victor, Krandel holds many of the notes and has always desired the farm. There are only a few acres left and the house, but Krandel has begun threatening me… He has given me two weeks to pay the rest of the debt, or he’s taking the farm.” She unfolded her arms. “It’s my home. I’ll end up in the factory too….”

      Gabriel slid an ornate box over on the desk and withdrew another cheroot from it. “Have you any idea how many people come through that door with stories like yours?” He lit it and drew, blew the smoke and added, “If you wish to make your money the way other women do here, I’ve no objection. Just don’t take the patrons from the tables or out the door until they’ve finished their play.”

      She frowned.

      He uttered succulently, “Sex.”

      Blair didn’t blush, because she said next, “I thought of that. I met Madam LaBelle…” She fidgeted with the jacket cuff. “It has occurred to me many times that I may as well go to work there, and make a bigger sum, than to work for Krandel.” She met his gaze. “Madam would only let me work there for a week, if I allowed her to auction my virginity.”

      Gabriel’s brow rose by degrees. “You’re a virgin?”

      The way he said it almost made her laugh. However, she was in too much of a hurry, and too much of a bind to do anything but think of a way to repay Krandel.

      “Yes. But, the percentage she is taking, and…the fact that Sir Thomas Krandel frequents her house, so she tells me, and has rather violent taste…well, she would not exclude him from the bidding, and she says most of the men who want virgins are eccentric in their…tastes.

      She assures me there are narcotics that would make the whole business tolerable. But violence or worse, I don’t want to risk the trauma of that.” She scraped her teeth over her bottom lip and murmured, “I live on a farm. I know the basics, but I don’t think I can stomach someone…th…

      He apparently got her meaning. “As I said, you can make an arrangement here. If you wish I shall ask Madam about the more…shall we say, normal patrons.”

      Madam LaBelle, a few discreet doors down, had the equivalent to his club in her bordello of beauties. Thus, he supplied the roof, the rooms, the ready customer for females who did domestic work or such and wanted to make extra coin on occasion. So long as the girls did not take customers from the tables or entice them to leave, it was between them which favours they sold.

      He was aware that LaBelle dealt in opium and other hallucinogens to enhance her customer’s pleasures and to make them lose their inhibitions. He wanted no part of that trade, though many of his patrons had visited LaBelle’s beforehand and were more than intoxicated upon arrival. This he ignored also. But he would allow no drug peddlers in the club. It might enhance sexual adventures, but it inhibited the gambler. He ran a fair house, because to do otherwise would have lost him business, and he, as much as any man, enjoyed the challenge when a patron was winning.

      “Oh, but…I thought…that I would arrange something discreet with you? That if you loan me the money, I will owe you, and not Krandel, and Madam said that you pleasure…she said that you were…skilled…knowledgeable, and… and that… You had not had virgins. That maybe, since you had stopped accepting female clients, you would take me in exchange.”

      “Madam has a warped sense of humor,” Gabriel muttered dryly. The old bird was likely laughing her arse off about this. As they’d shared a drink when she came by to gamble, he knew that she gained great amusement at what he did with society wives, and, that he had now stopped. She’d offered him any of her girls free of charge if he would send his patrons there. He wouldn’t. This was her bit of light revenge.

      “Oh… Then you won’t take the offer?”

      He was not interested in saving the world. London’s streets were thick with prostitutes, beggars, and homeless orphans. Country girls, immigrants off ships, they all showed up eventually, and he sent them to some contact who would give them work in houses or a temporary bed. He lived in a world separated from all others by more than a door, and he had gotten where he was by his own wits and sacrifices, his own planning.

      “I’m not a money lender,” he repeated again. “Nor does the fact I avoid virgins have anything to do with my desire to have one. I don’t. In my business dealings, whatever service or arrangement I provided was directly connected to making a profit for the club.”

      She processed that. “If you loan me the money. I know I am not beautiful like women who come here, but I’d be your mistress…for free. You could come to the farm, or I’ll come here. You won’t have to pay me anymore, or provide me with anything.”

      He considered her shrewdly. “When did you decide that?”

      She replied with blunt honestly, “When you came through the door.” Her hazel eyes moved over him and then rose to meet his gaze once more. “I expected someone far different. Negatively so. But you…well, take my breath away.”

      Cynic, jade that he was, Gabriel saw a candor, an unmasked sort of reaction in her expression that stilled his whole body. Women complemented him, they talked, they praised, and they lusted. It was business, and when he was in the business mode, his objective was to attain the goal, the coin. Thus his head was entirely involved, his body merely a tool, and his heart? That remained as distant as always. He felt that organ was not only fickle, but the source of many foolish mistakes his patrons made in their lives. It was sexual, often coarse, and all selfishly attached to his giving them their money’s worth. He wasn’t sure if it was discomfort or surprise that he was feeling at this country woman’s bluntness.

      “I’m flattered.” He smiled slightly. “However, I’m not in need of a mistress.”

      Blair felt a tense panic hit her stomach and tighten her skin. She had five days in essence, because of the time it took for travelling, and none of the seedy places she’d investigated were places she wanted to sell her body. They were like prisons, and the girls made nothing. Most never left the walls. That wouldn’t help her. If she had to do it, and it looked as if she did if she wanted to keep her home and get her brother free of the factory, she would just as soon do it with a man LaBelle described as a lover whom women paid to sleep with. One who’d made half his fortune because he was skilled in pleasing them.

      Her fingers trembled as she took off the jacket and tossed it with the hat. She had on a thin white cotton shirt, lose but tucked in her black trousers. Blair noted that the Fox was merely watching, nothing showing on his face. But she undid the neck cloth and removed the collar and then three buttons until her cleavage showed.

      Holding the collar and neck cloth she rasped, “I have bought and traded animals on their assets or flaws. Since I've never lain with a man, I cannot judge myself on either. I know my face is not as fair as you’ve seen… But I am willing to strip down so that perhaps you can judge me, and reconsider?”

      Gabriel’s loins stirred. He was vaguely surprised to feel it after years of separating it in his mind, and years of acting out, and playing an assigned role.

      He would have vowed moments ago that there was nothing stirring about basic sex. Men could do the thing with little foreplay or even desire. Male and female bodies, once nude, once touching, could go through the mechanics. He’d pleased women because they’d paid him to. And not all of them paid for penetration. He frankly, other than filing away what they expected, never thought of it.

      So it was with some surprise that he was looking at an ordinary woman in baggy clothing, showing only a hint of skin, and not overly large breasts, and feeling something he assumed was for untried youths and weak poets who made sex more emotional than it was.

      Yes, the skin, what he could see of it, looked to be flawless and sun-kissed, and her small breasts were clearly outlined against the soft cotton of her shirt, but still…

      “I could simply purchase your farm from you, for a fair price.”

      She shook her head. “It’s for Victor. I have to keep it. It has been in my family for a hundred years. My ancestors made it through droughts, floods, and losses; yes they borrowed and begged… But my brother is only nineteen… He is…a simple country lad, who left everything he was familiar with, everything he loved, to try and pacify Krandel to keep it… Please.”

      Christ. He really must be having an off day.

      Gabriel said, “I can’t afford a conscience in my business. Indeed, I've found that those who have one act on it and often find themselves both poor and taken for granted. But I have avoided situations such as you offer, because, for one, I do not have to look far for gratification if I desire it, and two, I have not had the desire for it.

      Three, there are limits to how I make my money. Those who work here, aside from the staff, are independent. I've no interest in pimping. I also have no intention of taking advantage of the desperate. I'm no do-gooder, no moral prig. Miss Mitchell, I live in reality, have for thirty years. My consideration, my plan, is running an exclusive gaming hell. Everything is straightforward, and the role of villain, sexual or otherwise, is not tempting.”

      “I’m twenty five years old,” she told him quietly, her gaze steady. “I’ve run the farm, my own business since I was seventeen. Other than Sir Thomas’s darkness hovering in my life, I have made decisions that would keep the farm in my family. I’ll admit I'm nervous, I have nothing on my mind save what is going to happen when I return, and how I may avoid Krandel taking my home…how I can save my brother from the horrors of working in that factory. But I am not an idealist, nor a romantic. I was honest and admit that you are quite the most handsome…l, I was truthful about that, it means that it will be no hardship to lay with you…it doesn’t mean that I expect any emotional or a long-standing connection from it.” She sat down on the edge of the settee, finger combing her hair and looking at him. “I would not feel that you took advantage in any way. I understand what you are saying. You are a businessman, well known, and I am too, in some regards. I have nothing else to offer you.”

      “Why don’t you find a husband Miss Mitchell? Some well-off country squire, or rich farmer? That sort of arrangement is the norm, expected, and far more forgivable, allowable if you will, than what you came here for.”

      She laughed, a little breathless, and sighed, “I deal with men. I talk to wives. I have no desire to become a slave or servant, or be a non-person as so many of them are. By law, I hold the deed until Victor is twenty-one. I am a woman of property and independence. I won’t trade that for marriage.”

      His brow rose. “I thought country women were born housewives and mothers. Painted in kerchiefs with contented smiles and babes all around. Should you give up your virtue?”

      “I’d like to have children,” she admitted honestly. “But I’m not a woman with options. I have to deal with this right now. And the only man I could contemplate marriage with would be one who’d truly understand why I had to do this. If he couldn’t…I wouldn’t want him in my life anyway.” She released a breath and glanced unseeing somewhere near his boots. “Dreams are really just goals we must work for, aren’t they?”

      “Yes. Ambitions at least.”

      She nodded. “I want things, but I’m not a dreamer.” She raised her gaze to his face. “I too live in the real world.”

      His brow had lowered, and he was simply holding her gaze when he asked, “Where are you staying?”

      Blair grimaced. “I slept in the back alley…I caught a ride to London with a peddler.”

      He stood. “Fix your coat and hat.”

      She did, slipping on the coat and then stuffing her hair under the hat, before she put the neck cloth on. After looking her over, he nodded and opened the door. Blair followed him out.